


The Natural State of Motherhood

by Lunarflare14



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Family, Love, Meta, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Super spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 14:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5251706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarflare14/pseuds/Lunarflare14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sole Survivor finds her son.</p><p>It isn't what she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Natural State of Motherhood

Judy loved Shaun and nothing would change that. She’d known it the first time she held her little boy in her arms. When she awoke from the cryo he was all she thought about. The world had burned while she slept and her little boy was out there somewhere in the middle of it all.

When she found out he was not a baby but a little boy, ten years old, it didn’t change anything. She would find him and take him back. It wasn’t right that they took her baby, that they killed her husband and she missed out on raising her child. Kellogg’s death was only a small revenge. He pulled the trigger on Nate but someone else pulled the strings. She would find his puppet master and end him

And then she did. She found Shaun. She knew it was him at second glance because he had Nate’s eyes. It had to be him. He was older then her now. He ran the very thing she had set out to destroy. She didn't know what to do or say, wandering around the Institute freely, not knowing how to proceed.

God help her, she loved him though. Despite the dark secrets of the Institute, she found herself oddly proud. Her son, without his parents, was raised by the Institute and didn’t just become a smart, competent leader; he helped build upon something amazing.  Conversely, he didn’t see what they were doing as wrong or there servitude slavery. Would he have thought differently if she had raised him? Possibly. She would never know and that was the Institutes fault.

 _You’re no son of mine, h_ er own father had said that to her brother when he refused to go off to fight in the war. She’d always thought he went the easy route. It’s easy to love your children when they obey you blindly. It’s easy to love your children when their values align with yours. She later learned that it is not so easy to dismiss your own child. Especially since she couldn’t, no, wouldn’t. She would never do that to Shaun. He was so much like her sometimes. 

Perhaps the Institute was better under her son’s leadership but he was dying, and even if she took up his title and led the people under her, she too would eventually pass on. Then the people of the wasteland above would suffer more than they already did.

The Institute had to be destroyed. She'd save the people she could. Call for the evacuation, but it had to be done.

Shaun kept calling the place the best hope for humanity. But he didn’t seem very concerned about the humanity on the surface. He didn’t seem concerned about the human like race he was building underground and then not acknowledging their right to choose. The Wasteland had it's problems, yes, but it had a right to be the captain of it's own destiny, as did the synths. It was an Old World notion, but she would champion their right to live freely. Shaun... Shaun probably wouldn't understand, and it was too late now to try and teach him. She had more regrets then she could count. Mostly she wished she’d never gone into that Vault.

And little synth Shaun, while sweet and beautiful, was not her Shaun. She would love him though, differently but she’d love him nonetheless. Her instincts told her that is why Shaun built him in the first place; to give her a second chance. To right the Institutes wrong from so many years ago. It had been an act of love.

She knew she had disappointed him. But he had never disappointed her. Not once. Not even when he wanted to burn the world. He believed what he was doing was right and he fought for it.

And she loved him. She always would.


End file.
